Question

I’m writing an application that analyses search engine results.

With the Google Search API now being depreciated and limited to 1000 queries/day they are forcing developers to move to the AJAX APIs and to use the Custom Search API to do a Google search.

The thing is I don’t need a Custom Search, I need a general search not one that is filtered by site; OK maybe filtered by USA/UK (Google.com/Google.co.uk).

Does anyone know how to just do a regular Google search using the AJAX APIs? Is the Custom Search the right thing to be using?

I don’t want to hit the 1000/day limit using the old service but this is exactly what I need.

I did find: How do I create a CSE that searches the entire web?
http://www.google.com/support/customsearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1210656

But by the sounds of it this will distort the search results.

Thank you.

Answer 1

OK. Here’s how I think it is done.

1. Create a Custom Search Engine.
2. Add a site such as *.com When this is created go to the Advanced tab
   and download the context xml.
3. Remove the Background Label associated with the site.
4. Upload the XML to replace the previous context.

This seems to work just fine and is returning the same values as far as I can see.